As little as I blog here it might be a surprise that I’m starting a different blog but here we are. Over the last year, I’ve spent a lot of time learning Italian, learning how to cook Italian, and learning about my family history and genealogy. So much that I just want to talk about it all the time. Most people don’t want to hear me talk about Italy all the time so it’s an outlet. If you want to follow along, check it out!
I almost forgot to blog this year! It’s now the last minute—9pm on December 31—and the only thing I could think of was to write was a sort of ‘Year in Review’ of the movies, TV, and music I’ve enjoyed this year. It is something I’ve wanted to do before anyway, so why not start the tradition? So if you’ll indulge me here are a few interesting movies, shows, and songs I was entertained by in 2023.
Continue Reading »You may have noticed lately that I’ve been blogging a bit more regularly. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do with my site but always found reasons not to do it. A lot of times the reasons were just being busy—which is kind of a fake reason. Other times it was I just didn’t know what I wanted to write about. So I’d like to talk a little about what changed in my blogging mindset, what tools I’ve been using, and how I’ve started building a second brain.
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I really enjoyed this post about using Things 3. I’ve been using it off and on since last year but this post has already changed how I structure my projects. The funny thing is I now have more areas and projects but I don’t feel as overloaded as when I had a more dense hierarchy. I previously had projects children of companies or bigger contexts. Now projects have their own area.
This summer we went to the US Open. We’ve been watching tennis for the last several years but I’ve never really thought about why I enjoyed watching it so much. It’s easy to just accept that they are amazing athletes—they are—but that never seemed to explain why I would watch it like I would my favorite movie. This summer it hit me; it’s the waves of confidence they have to manage during a match. Outside of doubles, the players are basically on their own; one bad shot can set the tone for the next game, one great shot could lead to a win. I think we see this in the tech industry all the time.
Continue Reading »In 2013 I fell in love with mechanical keyboards. More specifically I fell in love with small mechanical keyboards. I still don’t really like big keyboards which is why I was so happy to learn about 60% sizes like the Poker II. That was my first, then in 2015 I picked up the Poker III. The one problem with the 60% size is there are no arrow keys. This wasn’t a big deal because I stubbornly used Karabiner to reconfigure certain key combinations to be arrow keys.
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I feel like I link to Manton Reece all the time here. His blog is really the reason for why I’ve started blogging again. I often struggle with the dilemma of choice when it comes to things to get done. Work stuff is easier because someone is depending on you. It’s so easy to rationalize away your own goals. This idea of getting one thing done really resonates with me. Using something like Pomodoro or any task system, you can even try to get one thing done in some fixed set of time.
During a recent interview with Marcus Zarra on the CocoaConf Podcast, Marcus made a quick little comment that really resonated with me. To paraphrase, Marcus said something like “If you ask for opinions about something to a room of developers, you don’t get much of a response. If you just say something wrong they’ll tell you about it.” It’s an interesting point. People do love to correct you when you say something wrong or even something not 100% correct.
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